


Florence, 2020

by In_agony_and_ecstasy



Series: Present Day Florence [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Ace/aro!Nile Freeman, Aromanticism, Art History, Asexuality, Coming Out, Found Family, Italy, M/M, Post-Canon, Reminiscing, Self-Acceptance, Self-Discovery, Telling Stories, more like Found Dads TM, present day, the italian renaissance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:20:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25953619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_agony_and_ecstasy/pseuds/In_agony_and_ecstasy
Summary: Nicky, Joe, Nile and Andy have recently arrived in Florence for a Job. While Andy meets Copley, Nicky prepares Joe and Nile a meal. They reminisce about the Italian Renaissance and their old friend Michelangelo with Nile. Then Nile asks Nicky and Joe something that isn't out of simple curiosity, and the conversation becomes about something more than art history.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Present Day Florence [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1883686
Comments: 20
Kudos: 205





	Florence, 2020

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know someone on Tumblr made a post about the possibility of acearo Nile and I fell in love. Also, I'm just an Italian Renaissance art nerd. 
> 
> As usual, given that I don't belong to any culture portrayed in this fic, let me know if you see something off or offensive. I also did my best to do some historical research, and so if you have some expertise on the subjects I've included and notice I got something wrong, feel free to let me know that too. 
> 
> And thank you for reading!

We arrived at our safe house in Florence two days ago, and I was still trying to remember where everything was. While I searched the cupboards for vinegar and olive oil, which I knew I kept in every safe house even if it had been fifty years since we last stayed here, I eavesdropped on Joe in the living room talking to Nile. I had never seen anyone so excited to be going to Italy, which warmed my heart. Apparently, she had always wanted to go, and much to Joe’s delight, for the art. 

She had not stopped asking us questions since we landed. She had already booked tours to see the Statue of David, and the Sistine Chapel, and a tour at the Uffizi gallery, which I had informed her, immediately, I wouldn’t go to. There was a painting in the Uffizi Joe had painted, that had of course, been credited to someone else and I couldn’t stand to be in the presence of a tour guide explain to us the false history of Joe’s work. This led to even more discussions about Italian art, especially today, since Andy had left to meet Copley to discuss our next job. 

“How long were you here?” she was asking now. 

“How long when?” Joe responded. “We’ve been here more times than I can remember, probably.”

I found the olive oil behind a bottle of wine. Now for the vinegar. It had rolled behind the fridge, somehow. It was covered in dust and cobwebs. 

“During the Renaissance,” Nile said, like it was obvious. Joe huffed out a laugh. 

“The Renaissance lasted two hundred years, you know. We were here multiple times during it,” he said, “We were often here when we weren’t off fighting somewhere else. The longest period of time we were here was for…What would you say, _Cuore_? Fifteen years? Twenty?”

“Longer,” I called back, “If you don’t count the time we spent in the war. It would have been from…1508 to…whenever Clement Seven was imprisoned.”

“What war?” Nile asked, in an exasperated tone. She had expressed, a number of times, how frustrating it was when we referred to a specific event from a specific time, as if it was still current. I always forgot to clarify. It all still felt current to me.

“Against the Ottoman Empire,” Joe answered, “In Egypt. Andy and Quynh were already in Egypt at the time. We joined when the Ottomans invaded. A year later, Egypt was conquered and we returned here. I – Nicky and I needed some time, after losing that war. And we spent it here.”

Nile didn’t respond right away, and as I sliced the cucumbers for my Panzanella, I pictured her face, torn between asking Joe to elaborate on why to satisfy her curiosity, and letting it go, knowing it was a sore subject.

“So you were here,” she said, “When the Sistine was painted.” 

I exhaled, thanking her silently for not pushing the subject. 

“Oh yes,” Joe said, “I helped paint the first draft.”

“You _what_!” Nile shrieked and I stifled a giggle. “I thought he painted it all himself!”

“Yes, well, initially, Michelangelo was commissioned to paint just the twelve apostles on the ceiling, and other artists and I were hired to help him so that he wouldn’t have to spend four years standing on scaffolding craning his neck like he ended up doing. Any sane man would have accepted the commission as is. But not Michelangelo. No, we were not good enough at executing his vision and the apostles were not worthy enough to attach to his name. He painted over what we had started with what is there now.”

“He just wanted to get back at Julius Two,” I called back, “He was commissioned while he was trying to work on a sculpture, and you can’t exactly turn the Pope down. Plus he hated painting, especially when he could not be painting nude men, which no one could stop him from doing. Not even the Pope, if the ceiling is anything to show for it.” A moment passed, and then I added over my shoulder to Joe, “He wanted you to believe the reason was because you weren’t good enough, _ya hayati_.”

Joe caught my eye with a smirk on his face. This was not the first time I insisted that Michelangelo greatly envied Joe’s ability to render a single face as exquisitely as Michelangelo had rendered the book of Genesis. Had Joe alone been commissioned to paint the Apostles faces on the ceiling, not only would the faces be there, but they’d be far more stunning than the ceiling was now. 

Then I glanced at Nile, who appeared catatonic briefly. She looked back at Joe, who had returned his attention to his sketchbook. 

“So were you like… _colleagues_ with him?” she asked. “Like…you spent real time with him?”

“Not really colleagues,” Joe said, “I met him when I was hired to help on the ceiling, and only worked with him for a few weeks. After that, it was purely social. And he wouldn’t have given me the time of day if he wasn’t so enamored with Nicky.”

“He was not,” I said, as believably as I could. “He was like that with every man.”

“He was not like that with me. Besides, he frequently asked you to pose for him, _Amore mio_ ,” Joe said. 

I had finished slicing the cucumbers and commenced chopping the basil, all while pressing my lips together tightly, so as not to smile too broadly. 

Nile walked into the kitchen and hopped up on to the countertop as naturally as she might in the home she grew up in. It made me happy, to see her so comfortable here. So comfortable around us. 

“Tell me you posed for him,” Nile said, leaning toward me, as if I might give her an answer I didn’t want Joe to hear. 

“I refused,” I said, “He had enough men ready to undress and stand in front of him for hours on end. He didn’t need me.”

“You refused _Michelangelo_?” 

“He wasn’t _Michelangelo_ at the time,” I said, “He was just Michelangelo. Imagine, today, someone who you met just a few weeks prior, who has – what is that website you are always on? Youtube. He has a lot of people who watch him on his Youtube, and think he’s really something. And he asks you to stand in the middle of his yard naked for the better part of a day while he sits nearby sketching you from different angles and getting drunk on wine. Also it smells like shit and you haven’t eaten anything but stale bread for six days. You have no idea he will be one of the most famous artists the world has ever known in five hundred years. Would you do it? Not only that, but he asks you every time he sees you for twenty years? And, remember, you see him whenever he’s in town because your husband likes to sketch and shit-talk Leonardo Da Vinci with him.”

She was grinning at me now. “Well, when you put it like that.”

“Well, that’s how it was,” I said. 

“What did Joe say?”

At that moment Joe walked into the kitchen and plucked up a sun-dried tomato from my cutting board and plopped it into his mouth. “Do you think I can’t hear you in here, making me look bad?”

“Actually, I was just about to repeat myself in case you hadn’t,” I said. He grinned at me and pecked me on the lips.

“What did I say about what?” he asked, turning to Nile. 

“I mean, were you ever jealous?” she asked. “That some other artist was all over Nicky?”

“Jealous of what?” Joe asked. 

Nile blinked at him. “You know, weren’t you worried?”

“That he’d pose for Michelangelo? God, no. I begged him to,” Joe said. 

Nile’s eyes widened and she flitted her head between us both. 

“You _wanted_ him to?” 

“Why shouldn’t he?” Joe asked then, and I tilted my head back to sigh, just before he gestured to me and said, “Look at him. He should be on that ceiling. He should have been Adam. And if Nicky had just agreed _one time_ to let him –”

“ _Ogle me_?” I asked in Italian, because I wasn’t sure how to say it in English. 

Nile sighed. 

“ _It’s not ogling when I do it,_ ” he said now, leaning into me and looping his arms around my waist. 

“ _It most certainly is_ ,” I said, grinning. “ _Only I don’t mind it when it’s you._ ”

“Alhamdullilah, _I am the luckiest man on earth,_ ” he said, almost against my ear. I snickered and shoved him away from me playfully. 

Nile snapped her fingers at us. “Can y’all focus, please? I’m right here.”

“Sorry,” I said, “Truly. We forget you’re not Andy, who stopped caring centuries ago.”

She rolled her eyes, but looked back at Joe. “So you weren’t worried that like, Nicky would pose for Michelangelo and he’d paint him and Nicky would fall in love and run off with him?”

Joe full-belly laughed at the same moment I scoffed. 

“Him?” I asked, “Such a short little man with such an unkempt beard? And so arrogant too.”

Joe laughed again. “I was the only one who got along with him. I’m pretty sure Andy and Quynh left for Egypt because they couldn’t stand him.”

“He hated them too,” I said. 

“He did?” Nile asked. “Why?”

“He hated women in general,” I said, “Such an insufferable little ass.”

“Funny though,” Joe said now, shoving his hands in his pockets and shrugging. “Funnier than shit.”

I nod, despite myself. “He was funny, wasn’t he? Especially when he was drunk. And as insufferable as he was, it was nice to be around someone like us. Someone we could be ourselves around.”

Joe’s expression sobered up, and he nodded. 

“Because he was gay?” Nile asked.

We both nodded, though the word still caught me off guard. That word, “Gay” so common now, and yet so new. The words always changed and I could hardly keep up with it anymore. 

“He certainly was obsessed with men,” Joe said.

“Boys, practically,” I said.

Joe cringed. “Sometimes, that’s for sure. And since Nicky never aged –”

“Gross, you guys! Don’t ruin him for me!” she said, “I want to be _excited_ to see his art tomorrow, you know!”

Joe laughed, and shrugged. “He was not so bad, I promise. Definitely, a brilliant artist.”

“He was a pig,” I said.

Nile shook her head, and crossed her legs on the countertop. I returned my attention to the food, which I was suddenly grateful I hadn’t doused with oil yet. The bread would have been soggy by now. 

Joe and Nile returned to the living room and continued chatting, this time, about Rafael, who I remembered fondly, mostly because he’d been so taken with Andy, and had no idea what his heart was up against. Much like a little boy was infatuated with his pretty babysitter. 

I finished preparing the Panzanella and filled three bowls with it before walking into the living room, holding two and balancing another on my arm. Joe set his sketchbook down and took the one I was balancing away from me. Then I handed one to Nile and sat down to eat my own. 

“Panzanella is from here,” I told her. “Tuscany, I mean. Although, I liked it better before tomatoes reached Italy and it was made with onions.”

Nile shook her head, not like she was disagreeing with me but like her brain was having a hard time processing this. 

“You mean tomatoes weren’t _always_ in Italian food?” she asked. 

I snorted. “Not in _real_ Italian food.”

“Don’t get him started,” Joe said, and Nile laughed. 

“What? I’m homesick for my mother’s cooking,” I said, and Nile’s face softened. 

Joe sighed. “Me too.”

“Now I wish I’d learned some family recipes,” Nile said, staring at her food.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, “You will live long enough that the ingredients to your favorite foods go extinct. Everything, one day, will be completely unrecognizable no matter what you’ve memorized.”

At this, Nile grimaced, and began to eat. Luckily, her face lightened when she tasted the food. Once again, she was complimenting me for my cooking, even though, little cooking was involved with this dish. It was one of the only meals I could think to make with so little produce and non-perishable ingredients, and leftover bread. 

After a few minutes passed while we ate, Nile spoke again. Something about her tone made me wonder if she was hesitant to ask. 

“So, you guys met like…a lot of famous people, right?” she asked.

“Not as many as you might think,” I said, “At least outside Italy.”

“Well, are there any other famous people you know who were gay?” she asked. 

Joe’s brow furrowed when I looked at him. Something about her tone was different. It was not the same careless curiosity as before. 

“Well,” I said, setting my bowl down on the coffee table. Joe tilted his head back the way he does when he’s trying to remember something. 

“Sandro,” Joe said.

“Botticelli?” Nile Clarified. Joe nodded. 

“Leonardo had no preference,” I said, “That I know of. Right, Joe?”

Joe nodded. “William didn’t either.”

“William…?” Nile started. “William _Shakespeare_?” 

I was happy to see her stunned curiosity return. 

“We spent some time with him as well,” I said, “Again, I owe his acquaintance to Joe. They liked to exchange poetry.”

“Shakespeare,” Nile repeated. “ _The_ Shakespeare. You just…wrote poetry with him?”

Joe nodded. “We edited each other’s work. My poems about Nicky. His about…his Fair Youth, who he never named, even then.”

“That’s because it was you,” I said now, and Joe groaned. 

“Not this again,” he said. 

“You’re blind,” I said. 

“It could have been anybody,” Joe said.

“Your response proves my point. If there was a chance in hell it could have been anybody you would insist it was me.”

Joe’s jaw dropped and Nile clapped once when she laughed because she knew immediately I was right. Joe bit his lip to hide a smile. He knew I got him. 

I looked at Nile, somewhat smugly, and added, “And before you ask, no, I wasn’t worried he would write Joe a poem so beautiful he’d win over Joe’s heart.”

Nile opened her mouth to say something, but Joe spoke first. 

“Well how could he, when you’re the moon and my heart the tide?” he asked. 

After all these years my cheeks still flared when he said stuff like that. 

“As you can see why,” I said to Nile, gesturing to Joe.

“Lord. No wonder all his plays were like that.” Nile shook her head. 

“Speaking of his plays, Romeo was –” I started.

“Who else was like us?” Joe said, changing the subject and Nile laughed. I smiled, and let him have this one, to spare him the embarrassment. 

“I don’t know any other men that were,” I said. 

“Me neither. But Booker introduced us to Gertrude,” Joe said, and I swallowed thickly at the mention of him.

“Stein?” Nile asked, “Is it too much to ask for last names?”

I was, once again, silently thanking Nile for changing the subject. 

“Andy knew Sappho,” I said. 

Joe grinned. “Andy _knew_ Sappho.” 

“At least a handful of times, she knew Sappho,” I said, trying not to laugh. 

Nile’s eyebrows shot up and she slumped back in her chair, unable to speak for a moment. 

A moment passed while I got up to grab a glass of that very old wine, and Nile processed everything we said to her. This was often the case during our conversations. It made me feel closer to her, because I remembered so well being the same way when Joe and I finally met Andy and Quynh. When Andy told me she’d met Jesus, my young, Catholic heart could barely take it. 

“Can I ask you guys something?” Nile asked. 

Joe’s head immediately whipped in my direction, as I walked into the living room carrying my wine. I could read in his eyes how alarmed he was by Nile _asking_ if she could ask us questions, when she’d been asking questions for days. I sensed this had something to do with her earlier tone, and inhaled slowly, trying to appear as indifferent as possible. 

“Of course you can,” I said, before taking a sip of my wine. It tasted like my tongue falling asleep, just like the old days. I took another hearty sip.

“Have you ever met anyone famous who…like…just didn’t like anybody?” she asked. 

Joe quirked an eyebrow. “You mean like an asshole or?”

“No,” she said. “Like...you know how you guys only like men. And Andy likes anybody. And Quynh only liked women. Have you ever met anyone I would have heard of…who didn’t like anybody…like that?”

Joe laced his fingers behind his head, and glanced at the ceiling. I could tell by his tender expression, how deeply he was searching the depths of his memory for something to share that Nile might have wanted to hear. Which was difficult for him, I could tell, because he wasn’t sure what she wanted to hear. 

And then I remembered. 

“I did,” I said, and she turned to look at me. 

“Who?”

“I’m sorry, he’s not famous,” I said. “He was just another priest I knew, before I joined the Crusades. He confided in me his reasons for joining the priesthood. I think he could tell…my own reasons were similar. My reasons being, that I had no interest in women and assumed, at the time…that must be because I was meant to be a priest.”

I huffed out a humorless laugh then, staring into my wine. Joe gave me a sympathetic look.

“I thought ‘why else would God make me like this?’ of course, never assuming that there wasn’t a reason. That He just made people how He wanted them to be. Anyways, this priest told me he became one because he hated the thought of getting married and consummating it. His parents expected him to marry, of course. And he couldn’t.”

I swiveled the wine in my glass, trying to remember his face. I always got the impression that he didn’t think I understood what he was saying. Which confused me at the time, because I also believed he knew I liked men. But really, I _didn’t_ understand. 

“Actually, I’m only just now realizing I thought – all this time I thought he meant he wasn’t interested in anybody he was _supposed_ to be interested in. Women. But he really meant he wasn’t interested in _anybody_ at all. I thought he was – like me. Gay. He wasn’t.”

“And he, uh, didn’t – like, do romance, either?” Nile asked. 

I looked her in the eyes now, but felt as if I was looking at him. For the first time actually seeing someone, my friend from so long ago, like he wanted me to. 

“No,” I said, “I don’t think he did. It’s hard to say because – for us, back then, marriage and sex – were kind of one and the same. To want one was to want the other but – I really don’t think he did because – He wanted children, and so…if he’d been able to find a wife, I think he would have at least had children. Again, it’s – I can’t believe I’m only just seeing it now. I remember feeling so bad for him because he couldn’t have children with a man, of course. But he didn’t want a man either.”

Nile sat up leaning forward. Her fingers trembled and she tugged on the end of one of her braids. “I guess he was like me, then.”

We were quiet for a second at most. Just long enough for me and Joe to look at each other and understand that we were both thinking the same thing:

Nile was “coming out” to us. More words that still sounded foreign to me no matter how common they were now. Certainly words, an expression, I never imagined being relevant in my life again, at least not any time soon, now that Joe and I had finally, _finally_ after so so so long been able to leave hiding behind us. _Finally_ been able to get back more or less to how we were when we first fell in love, until perceptions of our kind changed so drastically for the worst. 

But that’s not where Nile was at in her life. She wasn’t at the point where she could just _be_ and let others witness.

“You thought you might be the only one,” I said now, and it wasn’t a question. That was why she’d asked us. She had wanted to know that in our thousand years on this planet, there was _somebody_ else like her. Again, I felt indescribably close to her. She was going through something I had gone through too, until dying for the first time and meeting Joe. And I felt for her, such a familiar, deeply-rooted ache I could not name. It made me want to hold her the way my mother held me when I was a child. 

Nile was still shaking, but she tucked her hands under her thighs to appear strong. 

“I wasn’t sure,” Nile said. 

Joe’s face became tender and he leaned forward in his seat to be eye to eye with her. 

“Nile, if there’s one thing being immortal will teach you, it’s that nobody, _nobody_ is ever the only one like them. You are not even the only immortal, let alone the only person who loves like you do. And you’re going to live so long, that a thousand years from now, you will be traveling to a country that doesn’t exist yet in a land that is currently called something else, with the latest twenty year old immortal, telling them stories about all the people you’ve met over the centuries who are just like you, and reassuring this person, that there were people just like them.”

“We are meant to love each other in different ways, Nile,” I said now, sharing with her thoughts I so often repeated to myself, those first few tentative months with Joe after we stopped killing each other, and started falling for each other. “Otherwise we wouldn’t. You’re exactly who God wanted you to be or you wouldn’t be.”

At that, Nile reflexively reached up to touch the cross dangling at her neck. I remembered a few weeks ago, Andy telling me Nile and I had a lot to talk about. This must have been what she meant. We’d been so busy – if it could be called “busy” – since meeting Nile I’d hardly had time to think about sharing a faith with her. 

Nile smiled now, and used her pinky fingers to dab beneath her eyes. 

“Shit, you guys,” she said, and nervously laughed. “I never even told my family. Never even said it out loud before.”

Instinctually, I stood up and gestured for her to come closer to me. She did, gratefully too, and I pulled her into my arms and held her tightly. A moment later, my feet were lifted off the ground with hers, into one of Joe’s bear hugs, which she laughed into. 

When he set us down, he fell back into his chair and I sat her down beside me on the couch. 

“You okay?” I asked, and Joe eyed her closely. 

“You know,” she said, and smiled. “Yeah. I think – I think I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you're curious, my tumblr URL is kill-your-authors@tumblr.com.


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